


What Fruit Has Fallen

by ObliObla



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hell, Post-Canon, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: There was something to be said about an apple tree.
Relationships: Mazikeen & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Mazikeen/Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 90





	What Fruit Has Fallen

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a panel from one of the _Lucifer_ comics (issue 16 from the Carey run), but the context is mine.

* * *

There was something to be said about an apple tree.

The heavens were painted in shades of violet and gray, and clouds gathered at the horizon in anticipation of rain. But for now, the air was pleasantly cool, and the sun was sinking beneath distant, verdant hills.

Lucifer sighed, watching his favorite star slowly disappear below the horizon. He traced a knot on the tree with his thumb before trailing his hand down the rough bark. He was, frankly, exhausted, so he settled on the soft ground of the grassy hill he’d alighted on and leaned back against the trunk, his eyes falling closed. He allowed the weariness he’d been hiding to show on his face, feeling it settle into his bones.

Hell had been, well, Hell. With ever present ash, conniving demons, and more souls damned every day, it had been a long millennium. They were all long, no matter how many there had been. No matter how many were yet to come.

He picked up the bottle of wine he’d brought and twisted out the cork. He retrieved a glass and poured a good measure, holding it out by the tips of his fingers. “For you, my dear.”

She took the glass from his hand and groaned. “Couldn’t find vodka?”

“Indulge me, Mazikeen,” he said softly.

She huffed out an amused breath, and he heard a rustling noise as she removed the sum of their bounty from the basket, laying it out on the grass. One of her knives made a _snick,_ and he opened his eyes, watching her slice down the side of the roast chicken. She severed the leg with skill and precision, setting it on a plate, turning to the other leg.

As she butchered, he took another drink and watched her face. She had been troubled, recently, in a way that it would have been dangerous to mention in Hell. But here…

He parted the cloth on the smaller basket and pulled out a still warm loaf of bread. Many things had changed about humanity, but they’d been making bread since they’d first teased the right texture out of wheat, and they’d be yet making it until they finally, truly forgot what boons it had once granted their ancestors. He held it up to his nose and breathed deeply before breaking it in half, the crust cracking under his hands. He brushed a few crumbs from his trousers before offering half the loaf.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

She didn’t look at him, merely frowned down at the pieces of meat, at the chicken fat slicking up her feather blade. “I…” Her frown deepened into a scowl, and she picked up a leg, viciously tearing the flesh from the bone with her teeth.

He nodded and set the half loaf down beside her, picking up a thigh and biting into its crisp, flavorful skin. She would speak in her own time; it wouldn’t do to force it. He’d learned that much, at least.

They ate in silence for a time as evening turned to night, and the stars came out to shine their light down on her dark hair, on the sharp line of her jaw. On her strong shoulders as she shifted from kneeling to sitting on the soft earth that was so much like Eden. On her downcast eyes.

“Why do you insist on all of this?” she asked, abruptly but also as though she had been waiting to speak for centuries. Perhaps she had.

“Pardon?” he breathed.

She put her glass down on a flat section of ground, and he did the same, leaning forward. She shook her head. “Visiting Earth, visiting _them…”_ She waved her hand at the small valley below them, at the pale, broken stones that dotted the hillside. “It’s never going to change anything! They’re in Heaven, and we—” She inhaled sharply and glared up at him, a single tear slipping down her reddened cheek.

“Maze, I—”

“We will never see any of them _ever_ again.”

After he had fallen, after he had _landed…_ After he had burned and howled and screamed and finally, _finally,_ after a length of time he still wasn’t certain of, regained his mind, he had thought that was the worst pain he would ever experience. Thought that, perhaps, it was the worst pain anyone ever could.

And then Linda had died, Daniel had died, Chloe had died. Ella had died, Eve had died, again. Beatrice had died. And all the ones who came after—who had the same eyes or the same smile or the same brilliance in their soul—were raised up to a place that neither Lucifer nor Maze could ever set foot in.

And every time they went through the humans’ strange rituals, their attachment to the empty shells that dwelt only in darkness, it felt like falling all over again. But this pain was crueler, this knife cut deeper, and he knew it was because he had _chosen_ this agony, with all the foreknowledge of Prometheus bringing fire to man knowing how hot it could burn.

And then they were all gone, and the pain became unbearable, and the Devil and his demon had returned to Hell, more or less permanently. It was better, perhaps, down in the pit. Hell still needed a ruler, and it was so much easier not to feel all those things they hadn’t the strength for.

He shook his head roughly. “I know we won’t, Mazikeen,” he muttered quietly, letting his head fall back against the tree again.

“Then why?” she challenged, and there was a _thud_ as one of her knives buried itself to the hilt in the trunk a few inches above his head. “Why break us _over and over?_ What’s the point?”

“I don’t want to forget,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“Forget what? Wine? The stars? What is so important that—?”

 _“Love,_ Maze,” he said sharply, and he knew there was fire in his eyes, but he forced it down and massaged at his brow. “I don’t want to forget how to feel. Not again.”

She didn’t seem to know what to say to that. He reached up and pulled the blade from the trunk, watching it glint in the starlight. When he spoke again, there was a fervor to his voice that frightened him. “I can feel it slipping away, sometimes. I know you feel it too.”

“Mercy is weakness,” she proclaimed.

“And weakness is death,” he finished, her mother’s words torn from her mouth, from his. “But sometimes… I wonder what use life is without it.”

He could hear her troubled breathing as he shut his eyes again. It was quiet, here. _Safe._ At least, as safe as anything was. But, still, he tracked the small animals that crept through the brush, the more distant sounds of human habitation in whatever century this was. The rustle of fabric and wicker as Mazikeen put away the food they hadn’t eaten. He couldn’t stop. It _didn’t_ stop. Not ever.

 _“You_ could go to them,” she said, breaking the relative silence. “Tell your siblings to fuck off and _see_ them again.”

“I can’t,” he whispered harshly.

“You _could,”_ she retorted.

“There would be a war.” His head was pounding with all the things that even here he couldn’t let himself feel. His eyes opened, and the meager light of the stars nearly blinded him.

She licked her lips, showing more bravado than he knew she felt. “You could win, this time.”

He shook his head.

“You would have welcomed it, once.”

“Once, yes,” he admitted. “I’m just… so _tired,_ Mazikeen.” The stars were mocking him, now. They would blaze for eons longer. These humans, their souls bursting with a light so much like his own, would likely blaze alongside them, even from the cruel gutter of Hell. “I don’t know what to do. Sometimes, I…” He bit his lip, but he could not demand vulnerability from her if he refused to show it himself. “Sometimes, I don’t know how to continue on.”

The jagged passageways, dense with doors, grew with every new damned soul. They rent their way through the landscape as he had, hurled headlong flaming, and he imagined them crawling out to the nebulous edges of the realm, shattering Hell itself into infinite shards. And he, the king of ashes and broken things, would rule over the fragments until the stars burned out. Longer, maybe. Forever, even, whatever that meant. And he was already so, _so_ weary.

“I _hate_ when you talk like that,” Mazikeen said, hissing out a breath. “You’re the lord of Hell.”

And Lucifer had heard these words many times, but there was no accusation in them, this time, only an aching uncertainty that strengthened as she continued. “I’m just Maze. I don’t have some grand purpose, some… _light.”_ She gestured at him almost violently. “I…I barely remember when I made my oath, when I abandoned everything I ever knew for _you.”_

“Mazikeen,” he said softly, “you know that I will be forever grateful for—”

“That’s not the _point!”_ And she was on her feet, now, knives raised by instinct. She breathed shakily.

He rose as well. “Then what _is_ the point?” And his voice was cold, but everything was shattering inside. She was the only person he had left.

She snarled and, abruptly, shot forward, one knife pressed into his throat, the other curved against his belly, prepared to slice under the ribs. He made himself still, not pulling away, not knocking the blades to the side. Simply waiting.

She was crying and grimacing, trying to staunch her tears, trying not to show this weakness. But her eyes were intent on his. And he waited.

She choked on an angry sob and pressed closer, slicing into his neck and torso. Blood welled up, staining his white shirt. And, still, he waited.

“I _can’t_ lose you,” she growled.

He reached up and took her hands in his. She panted roughly, but let him pull her arms away, let the knives fall to the ground. “I wouldn’t do that,” he whispered. “Not to you.”

Her breath hitched, and she let her head fall against his shoulder. “I’m… afraid,” she admitted, quietly, as if the words were as sharp as her knives, cutting at her throat, at her belly.

“I know,” he said just as quietly.

She sniffed, gripping his shirt hard enough it tore under her fingers. “It was so much easier when I could turn everything into anger.”

He wrapped an arm lightly around her shoulders and pressed the other to the small of her back. They had been in this position many times, but never like this. Never simply for comfort. When they finally pulled apart an age might have passed, or maybe simply a moment.

Lucifer dropped to his knees in the soft earth and pressed his hand against the wound on his neck while his other picked one of the knives up from the ground. He cleared his throat. “I feel I’ve been remiss in certain things.”

Mazikeen blinked. “What?”

He drew the blade over his already bloodied palm, and the pain still felt a little like falling. But only through falling had he ever understood who he truly was. “For eons you have upheld your vows, but never have I made any in return.”

She frowned. “You don’t have to—”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “I choose this freely.” Like when he’d commanded her to sever his wings. But this was no command. He offered her the knife. “Do you accept?”

She took it hesitantly, but her hand was steady when she drew the blade across her own palm. They pressed their hands together roughly and hissed in concert.

He recalled—as pristine in his memory as it ever would be—when their positions were switched, when he stood beside his throne and she knelt before him, drawing the blade over her palm, refusing to let the pain show on her face. And he had believed _that_ to be the supreme virtue. But now there was pain on her face, was pain on his, and they would not allow this thing like mercy to be any kind of weakness. Would not allow it to destroy them.

Not if they were together.

“I have a… proposition for you,” he said with a lightness he knew was out of place. But when had he ever done anything the right way around?

She looked from their bleeding hands to his position on his knees and raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Oaths are something sacred.”

He shrugged. “Never been much for sacred.”

She snorted a laugh, and for a moment they were Lucifer and Maze, as they had been when there were still others they believed they could trust. But then she sobered. “What’s the proposition?”

“Co-reign,” he said simply; like most decisions he made it was one that had been a long time coming, but it had also been made in an instant. “Might have to… expand the throne, as it were, but—”

“I’m just Maze,” she said again, as if he, of all beings, cared what she’d been created for. “Just a daughter of Lilith.”

He chuckled. “Well, I suppose this’ll hack her off, then.”

She blinked. “You don’t fear reprisal?”

“Of course I do,” he said, letting the casualness fall away from his demeanor. “But it’s worth it to not be…” He shook his head. He still couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.

But she seemed to understand, gripping his hand harder. “What do you pledge?” she asked, apparently insistent they do this properly.

He nodded. “We rule together, sharing power equally. You would no longer serve me except inasmuch as I might serve you. You would be another lord of Hell, or lady or whatever term you prefer.”

“Queen,” she said simply.

He nodded again. “Then we are in agreement?”

She tilted her head. “And… when you run off and do some shit I think is dumb?”

He let his lip curl upward. “Then we work it out.”

“And when I stab first and ask questions later?”

“Then we work it out.”

“And when we get mad as hell at each other?”

He smirked. “Then we _fight_ it out.”

She exhaled noisily through her nose and clasped his hand even tighter. “And this you vow?”

“And this I vow.”

She let go and turned away, apparently deep in thought. As he rose, she gathered up the baskets, preparing to return to the darkness. He let his wings extend, illuminating their little rise, lighting the broken stones on the hillside. The leaves of the apple tree brushed softly against his feathers.

He glanced at the tree again, remembering another, so very long ago now. He reached up, past the lower branches, and plucked the finest fruit he could see. It was blushed a delicate pink, the line near the stem a brilliant yellow. It was so fragrant his mouth watered from its aroma even as he held it. But he did not taste of the fruit, he did not bite into its sweetness. He simply held it out, waiting to see if she would accept it. “My queen?”

And she did.


End file.
